Interfacing with your car's computer?

[bpitt]

Does anyone know, or have tried, to build an interface and connect, say, your laptop to your 'computer' in your car? I.E., I see these performance chips for sale to 'reprogram' your cars chip or computer. Was just thinking it would be cool to hit a couple of keys on my laptop and change the performance settings on my car. Anyone ever toyed with that idea?

[Thorn]

Re: Interfacing with your car's computer?

Does anyone know, or have tried, to build an interface and connect, say, your laptop to your 'computer' in your car? I.E., I see these performance chips for sale to 'reprogram' your cars chip or computer. Was just thinking it would be cool to hit a couple of keys on my laptop and change the performance settings on my car. Anyone ever toyed with that idea?

There are at least a couple of setups on the market that will do exactly that.

Google for "OBD-II" along with "laptop" or "computer" OBD-II is the name of the automotive interface/bus that has been standard since 1996. From there you should be able to narrow down what kind of capabilities you need.

One example: http://www.nology.com/laptopdyno.html

[VAX_to_PBX]

Re: Interfacing with your car's computer?

I've got OBD-II, and OBD-III analyzers, but no PC interface equipment. Last time I checked even cheap haggard OBD equipment was around two hundred bucks.

Some models of cars don't use EPROM, so you can program, and configure the timing without getting a replacement chip. There was an interesting project under GNU that interfaced with OBD through Linux called DashBoard Linux. Not sure what happened to it.

There are also older systems Pre-OBD like M.E.C.S. My old 89 MX6 had M.E.C.S, and I couldn't find a interface solution to tune the turbo timing.